WILLIAM STILL, ESQ., My dear Sir:—­In answer to your request, that I would furnish, an article for your forthcoming book, giving incidents within my personal knowledge, relating to the Underground Rail Road; I have already apprized you of my illness and my consequent inability to write such an article as would be worthy of your publication.  However, feeling somewhat relieved to-day, from my paralysis, owing to the cheering sunshine and the favor of my Almighty Preserver, I will try to do what I can, in dictating a few anecdotes to my amanuensis, which may afford you and your readers some gratification.

    These facts I must give without reference to date, as I will not
    tax my memory with perhaps a vain attempt to narrate them in
    order.

As mentioned in my “Life of Arthur Tappan,” some abolitionists (myself among the number), doubted the propriety of engaging in such measures as were contemplated by the conductors of the “Underground Rail Road,” fearing that they would not be justified in aiding slaves to escape from their masters; but reflection convinced them that it was not only right to assist men in efforts to obtain their liberty, when unjustly held in bondage, but a DUTY.

Abolitionists, white and colored, both in slave and free States, entered into extensive correspondence, set their wits at work to devise various expedients for the relief from bondage and transmission to the free States and to Canada, of many of the most enterprising bondmen and bondwomen.  They vied with each other in devising means for the accomplishment of this object.  Those who had money contributed it freely, and those who were destitute of money, gave their time, saying with the Apostle:  “Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have, give I thee.”

1.  I recollect that one morning on reaching my office (that of the treasurer of the American Missionary Association), my assistant told me that in the inner room were eighteen fugitives, men, women and children, who had arrived that morning from the South in one company.  On going into the room, I saw them lying about on the bales and boxes of clothing destined for our various missionary stations, fatigued, as they doubtless were, after their sleepless and protracted struggle for freedom.

On inquiry, I learned that they had come from a southern city.  After most extraordinary efforts, it seemed that they had while in Slavery, secretly banded together, and put themselves under the guidance of an intrepid conductor, whom they had hired to conduct them without the limits of the city, in the evening, when the police force was changed.  They came through Pennsylvania and New Jersey to my office.  The agent of the Underground Rail Road in New York, took charge of them, and forwarded them to Albany, and by different agencies to Canada.

2.  I well remember that one morning